Explanations for forgetting: Retrieval Failure

A form of forgetting which occurs when we have insufficient cues. Memory is available but not accessible

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What is a cue?

A 'trigger' of information that allows us to access memory, stored at the time of learning and have to be there at time of recall

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Endel Tulving came up with the encoding specificity principle... which says what?

If a cue is to help us to recall information it must be present at encoding and at retrieval. If they're different, there will be some forgetting

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Who carried out a study into context-dependent forgetting?

Godden and Baddeley

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What happened in the context-dependent forgetting study?

Sea divers were asked to learn a list of words either underwater or on land then recalled either underwater or on land

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What did Godden and Baddeley find out?

Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions than the matching. External cues different, so led to retrieval failure

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Who carried out a study into state-dependent forgetting?

Goodwin

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What happened in the state-dependent forgetting study?

People were asked to learn a list of words when drunk or when sober - recall after 24 hours when some sober, others had to get drunk again. Better at recalling when drunk

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Why can we question context effects?

Godden and Baddeley said contexts have to be very different - land and underwater. E.g. different rooms, unlikely to result in much forgetting as not different enough. Limitation - real-life applications don't explain much forgetting

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What do I mean by 'recall versus recognition'?

Context effect may be related to kind of memory being tested - Baddeley replicated underwater experiment, but used recognition test - no context-dependent effect, performance same for all conditions Cues only affect memory when tested in certain way

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How is supporting evidence for retrieval failure a strength?

One researcher said retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from LTM - increases validity of explanation, occurs in real-life situations as well as lab